A Collaboration

I like collaborating with others. I think sometimes it can be scary. What if that person who asked us to collaborate won't like our "stuff?" What if we mess up? What if they say there are no rules and you end up altering something the other person really didn't want altered? What if............ I've collaborated twice over the last several years and thoroughly enjoyed it. Most recently I've been collaborating with a woman who's in my mixed media/art journaling class that I lead most Saturday mornings at my local AC Moore craft store. Connie called me one day to find out more about the class. I hung up the phone with her thinking "she gets it. She gets this art journaling thing. She gets me." I did not know if she really would show up and if she did if she'd keep coming back. She did and she has. So we've been passing our Strathmore 5.5 x 8.5 inch water color journal back and forth to each other. Connie's and my style is totally different which is what's cool about it. What's interesting is the blending of our styles to create something totally new is so interesting. So, we will exchange our books not knowing...... we agreed no rules, we agreed to trust each other, be respectful and trust the process..... she might start a page and I then might add to it or start something on the opposite page. We have jumped around a lot. We don't really know if any of the pages are really finished yet. Connie's and my choice of colors or color palette is very similar except for this orange she "threw" at me. I mean how was she to know that orange was my least favorite color to work with unless it is around the Autumn season? So I took up her challenge and tried my best to celebrate orange. I think the neat thing about any collaboration is that collaborators bring their own stories to the canvas, which then can spark new ideas and opportunity to play in a different way so the art takes on an entire new feeling. Does that make sense? Seeing these images on the screen looks and feels differently than in paper form. I am reminded by Julia Cameron's words: "The courage to create is a courage to make something out of what we are feeling." You can find more of Connie's work by going here I am linking to Paint Party Friday where there's a lot of courage and creativity going on. And thank you Connie for our collaboration, for being who you are, and for "getting me." Thanks for visiting. Until next time.

Paint Party Friday

Last week I showed you the canvas I'd been working on as part of my Saturday morning workshops teaching at my local AC Moore arts and crafts store. I wanted to add some bling but wasn't sure how I wanted to do it. I had to work quickly with laying down these beads with a hot glue gun. And then I trimmed the length of the bead strands. I was pretty happy with the end result. If you zoom in you can see I got happy with gold glitter. I am enjoying this home made tapestry on my studio wall and look forward to showing you more tapestries by the people in my workshop as they become finished. Happy Paint Party Friday!! You can go here to see more wonderful things. Thanks for visiting here.

Marbleized Paper

Hello friends. I hope you are well and warm. On Christmas Day here in Virginia it was on the warm side. I think in the low 60's so I opened some windows in the studio. I filled a dishpan with some water and tore up some card stock. I sprayed the water with several colors of spray paint and took a stick and swirled it lightly on the surface of the water. I quickly laid some torn paper on top of the water, left it there for about 10 seconds and then used some tweezers to remove the paper. Pretty cool don't you think?. I will say this. You have to do this with ventilation and I probably should have done it outside; even with the windows open I still got a bit of a headache from the fumes of the spray paint. I also noticed that after using the same pan of water the paint was sticking to the stick as I swirled the water and so I had to spray more paint before I laid the paper on top of the water. I was too impatient or maybe too lazy to change the water. It was all trial and error. Still the results were pretty neat. Have you ever done this? Tomorrow I want to share the lovely pieces the women in my Saturday mixed media workshop have been working on. The results are so amazing. Thanks for visiting.